We’ve been here before. Sure, it seems worse, and some of the problems we’re facing are novel, but you don’t have to look hard to find analogs and parallels from the past. As Mark Twain put it: “History doesn’t repeat … Continue reading Distress Flares: Cinematic Survival Guide, Vol. 1
October marks the 75th anniversary of Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo’s refusal to answer the House on Un-American Activities Committee’s question: “Have … Continue reading HIGH NOON ON THE WATERFRONT
I guess you could say the low point arrived on March 27, 2022, with the broadcast of the 94th Academy Awards. No, the “slap heard ’round the world” wasn’t it—though that cast a pall over the proceedings, didn’t it?—but the … Continue reading Cinema 101
The only good and original films I’ve made were made after my testimony. Every picture that is successful has one little miracle in it. —Elia Kazan Continue reading Born On This Day — September 7, 1909
The process of writing and directing drives you to such extremes that it’s natural to feel an affinity with insanity. I approach that madness as something dangerous and I’m afraid, but also I want to go to it, to see … Continue reading Born On This Day — September 7
I became a film director out of admiration, out of wanting to be like that—hero worship. I think it’s the most wonderful art in the world. —Elia Kazan Continue reading In Their Words — Wednesday, December 26, 2012
The camera is more than a recorder, it’s a microscope. It penetrates, it goes into people and you see their most private and concealed thoughts. —Elia Kazan Continue reading In Their Words — Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Michael J. Cinema 